Shouting matches and minor clashes erupted at the National Palace Museum yesterday after officials turned down a request by Tibetans and activists to present a photo of the Dalai Lama to “fill the missing part” of an exhibition on Tibetan Buddhist art.
“The Dalai Lama is the highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism. How could a portrait of the Dalai Lama be missing at an exhibition about Tibetan Buddhism?” asked Regional Tibetan Youth Congress-Taiwan (RTYC-Taiwan) chairman Tashi Tsering, wearing a traditional Tibetan outfit and holding up a large portrait of the Dalai Lama.
Several police officers stood in front of Tashi and other activists, blocking their attempt to enter the exhibition with the picture, asking them to leave immediately.
PHOTO: CHEN YI-CHUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
“If you accept the portrait, we will leave right away,” Tashi said.
Police refused the request, with one officer saying they would not allow anyone to take “that thing” — referring to the Dalai Lama’s portrait — into the venue.
The remarks were not well received by the Tibetans.
“It’s not ‘a thing,’ it’s a portrait of the Dalai Lama, the highest figure in our religion,” they said.
The standoff lasted about 20 minutes.
Police said the activists were in violation of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) because they had not applied to hold a political rally. The Tibetans countered that their action was religious as they were there to defend their religion, adding that by law, an assembly and parade permit is not required for religious activities.
“We’re all about religion, it’s the Chinese government that’s trying to politicize everything,” RTYC-Taiwan vice-chairman Tenzin Chunpel said. “They are trying to reinforce the impression that Tibet has always been part of China through this exhibition, that’s why they’re purposely avoiding talking about the Dalai Lama in the exhibition.”
“If we have to apply to deliver a portrait of the Dalai Lama, who applied to the Tibetans to take these pieces of art — which belong to all Tibetans — to an exhibition outside of Tibet?” Chunpel said.
Students for a Free Tibet-Taiwan spokeswoman Jade Kuo (郭聖潔) said items in the exhibition “were stolen by the Chinese government from the Tibetans when they invaded Tibet in the 1950s.”
Although police said the activists should have applied for a permit before the demonstration, an officer told the Taipei Times it would not have been approved even if they had applied.
“We could not possibly have approved the application because it involved politics,” the officer said.
The officer could not explain why, if the application for the rally had been political in nature, it would have been turned down.
“You ask me based on which law?” he said. “Well, maybe I should not answer this question.”
Museum Southern Branch deputy director Lin Chen-feng (林振豐), who is in charge of the exhibition venue, said the museum would only deal with purely cultural and artistic issues.
“[The activists’] demands are political. That’s not something I can respond to,” he said.
Asked why a portrait of the Dalai Lama could not be considered a piece of art, Lin said he did not consider a person’s portrait art.
Failing to receive a positive response from the museum, the Tibetans and their supporters sat down to recite Buddhist chants and sing the Tibetan national anthem before leaving.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS